Get the free digest
World

Vodacom rules out financial services spin-off

In its latest update, the tech company said it was seeing “early signs of stabilisation” in its efforts to improve capacity to enable more users to get back on its systems, after a global outage affected millions of users for more than 12 hours on Thursday and Friday.

✦ Extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting•From 9 sources•1 min read•Updated November 13, 2026, 12:09 PM UTC
Key points
  • In an update on Microsoft’s Service Health Status page Friday morning, the company did not explain what triggered the catastrophic outage but said that it did not […].
  • Outlook, Teams and Copilot remain disrupted in 74 countries as Microsoft reports ‘marginal success’ in fixing outage.
  • Microsoft said the outage was caused by servers unexpected becoming unavailable, straining other systems.

Microsoft is scrambling to fix an outage of some of its systems that has caused huge disruption to users, organisations and businesses across the globe.

Additional details
  • Microsoft hasn't yet given a cause for the outage, which is affecting Outlook email users.
  • Microsoft on Friday was still struggling to restore service to millions of Outlook and Exchange email users more than 18 hours after its servers crashed and became unavailable.
  • The software giant said that it was "not aware" of malicious activity that could have caused the outage.
  • As disruption affects users worldwide, Microsoft admits fixes are not going 'as expected'.
  • African telecoms heavyweight Vodacom has ruled out spinning off its financial services unit, its CEO Shameel Joosub told Semafor, rejecting a path taken by rivals seeking to extract more value from fast-growing mobile money businesses.

How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →

Advertisement

Every article behind this summary — 10 articles from 9 outlets

BBC WorldNovember 13, 2026, 12:09 PM UTC → VarietyNovember 13, 2026, 11:52 AM UTC → Al JazeeraNovember 13, 2026, 11:18 AM UTC → The Guardian WorldNovember 13, 2026, 10:15 AM UTC → Al JazeeraNovember 13, 2026, 9:30 AM UTC → France 24November 13, 2026, 9:18 AM UTC → DW NewsNovember 13, 2026, 7:46 AM UTC → BBC TechnologyNovember 13, 2026, 2:38 AM UTC → TechCrunchNovember 12, 2026, 7:03 PM UTC → SemaforNovember 11, 2026, 2:50 PM UTC →

Related stories